Digital Audio Broadcast

Patrick Sneep
Kristoffer Nordstrom
May 13, 2008

Contents
1 History 2

2 DAB in Switzerland 2

3 DAB Features 3
3.1 Disadvantages . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3

4 Technology 3
4.1 Bands and Modes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
4.1.1 Bands . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
4.1.2 Modes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
4.2 Audio Codecs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
4.2.1 MP2 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
4.2.2 HE-AAC v2 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
4.3 Error Correction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
4.3.1 Convolutional Coding . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
4.3.2 Unequal Error Protection . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
4.4 Modulation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
4.4.1 OFDM . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
4.4.2 DQPSK . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
4.4.3 Ensembles and Bitrate . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
4.5 Single Frequency Networks . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5

5 DAB+ 6

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1 History
The Digital Audio Broadcasting (DAB) standard was designed in the 1980s at
the Institut f
ur Rundfunktechnik in Germany. In 1985 there were first demon-
strations and in 1988 the first radio transmission with DAB had been completed
successfully. DAB is part of the Eureka 147 standardization which was devel-
oped by the European Union as a continent-wide standard. The MPEG-1 Audio
Layer II (see 4.2.1) was developed for Eureka 147. Furthermore DAB was the
first standard to utilize OFDM (see 4.4.1), a modulation technique now fre-
quently used in modern wide band digital communication systems. In 1997
the World DAB Forum was formed to coordinate the worldwide distribution
of DAB, today it is known as the World DMB Forum now presiding both the
DAB and DMB (Digital Media Broadcasting) standard. The first country to
push the DAB standard was the UK who introduced BBC services in digital
form to the broad public in 1999. Denmark soon followed and today DAB has
replaced analogue radio transmission in these two countries.

2 DAB in Switzerland
In 1999 the SRG SSR idee suisse received the concession to build a DAB network
in Switzerland. The same year the first transmission stations went online. Until
2001 the german part of Switzerland and the Geneva region, as well as the east-
west and north-south transportation connections. In 2007 coverage amounted
to 80 percent of the population and by the end of 2009 DAB should be receivable
in the whole of Switzerland.

Figure 1: DAB transmitters in Switzerland

Currently 12 radio stations are available in the German-speaking, 11 in the

French-speaking and 10 in the Italian-speaking part of Switzerland. Some of
these are DAB exclusive, therefore not receivable on analogue radio.

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3 DAB Features
No UKW-like fading of audio quality, if the DAB radio recieves a signal
of appropriate strength optimal audio quality is guaranteed.
Noise can be filtered out, for example interferences from high-voltage
power lines signal reflection on obstacles can be used to augment signal
quality, with UKW reflections lead to worse reception.
Besides the conventional audio radio program, additional features like text
informations about the song can be transmitted.

The digital nature of the signal enables to build receiver devices with new
features, like built-in recording, rewind or an electronic program guide.
More stations, because DAB is more bandwith efficient than analogue
radio, so more stations can be placed into a smaller part of the spectrum.
The bandwith is variable, so programs which require less bandwidth like
spoken text can be sent using a lower bitrate. This leaves more bandwith
to music programs in higher quality,

3.1 Disadvantages
Reception quality the DAB technology is over 20 years old so compres-
sion algorithms and error correction codes are not on the level they are
today. The quality of DAB transmitted audio is not superior to analogue
radio, sometimes it can even be worse.
A time delay occurs when processing the signal in the reciever, so the au-
dible DAB program is delayed by a few seconds compared to the analogue
radio.
DAB+ is going to replace DAB because of the beforementioned outdated
compression and error correction, but the DAB devices already sold are
not compatible with DAB+ . So when the new standart is introduced, all
the old DAB receiver devices become obsolete.

4 Technology
4.1 Bands and Modes
4.1.1 Bands
To operate a DAB any frequency above 30MHz could theoretically be used. Ra-
dio frequencies are very rare resources and do not obey to international borders.
To avoid, interference international agreements have been established that limit
DAB to two different spectra. The Band III at 174-240MHz and L-Band at
1452-1492MHz. Due to the exclusive use of the latter by US armed services
within the USA, its use is restricted to terrestrial broadcast only in Canada.

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4.1.2 Modes
A mode describes a specfic configuration of the various system parameters. They
have been optimized for different circumstances like recievers traveling at high
velocites or short-distance local ensembles (see 4.4.3).

Mode I VHF transmission up to 240kph

Mode II Transmission up to 1.5GHz. Fewer subcarriers,
bigger carrier distance and lower protection level.
Intended for local L-Band ensembles.
Mode III Satellite transmission from satellites up to 3GHz.
Short symbols and protection intervals.
Mode IV Compromise between mode I and II.

Table 1: Available transmission modes

4.2 Audio Codecs

Uncompressed audio streams would use too much bandwith to be practical for
wireless broadcasts. Hence the need for suited compression algorithms.

4.2.1 MPEG-2 Audio Layer 1

MPEG-1 Layer 21 is commonly known as MP2 because of the suffix of such
files on (mainly) windows computers. It has been developed under the name
Musicam2 (Masking pattern adapted Universal Subband Integrated Coding And
Multiplexing).

4.2.2 HE-AAC version 2

Technological improvements have brought us eAAC+3 . It is about three times
as efficient4 as the MP2 standard which dates back to 1982. Unfortunately it
will only be used in DAB+ (see 5) which isnt backward compatible.

4.3 Error Correction

A digital signal is very prone to errors reception. A single bit is easily flipt
while being transmitted, especially if the signal is weak and reception bad.
Hence redundand information is sent to recover the original input.

4.3.1 Convolutional Coding

DAB uses Convolutional Coding5 to correct the transmission errors. Convolu-
tional Coding is very common in many wireless transmission protocols ranging
from satellite communication to bluetooth devices. This technology is being
slowly replaced by turbo-codes6 which offer lower complexity.
1 MPEG-1 Layer 2 Wikipedia entry
2 MUSICAM Wikipedia entry
3 HE-AAC Wikipedia entry
4 worlddab.org: How DAB works
5 Convolutional Coding Wikipedia entry
6 Turbo Codes Wikipedia entry

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4.3.2 Unequal Error Protection
By using UEP parts of the stream that are less prone to contain vital informa-
tion (like silence), will recieve a lesser protection and therefore use less space
on air. The drawback thereof is a shallow digital cliff. This means that the
decoder creates a burbeling sound which is more inconvenient to listeners than
the interferences on FM radio.
DAB+ in contrast uses Equal EP which has a steep digital cliff. It will
provide either no sound at all or excellent quality. By adding Reed-Solomon
codes as another layer of protection, DAB+ provides better reception where
theres weak or no reception at all right now.

4.4 Modulation
4.4.1 Orthogonal frequency-division multiplexing
To protect the signal against interferences it is split up into 1536 subcarriers.
Each subcarrier carries only a small part (a symbol) of the entire digital signal
and the loss of a single subcarriers data can easily be repaired by the error
correction algorithm. If a FM/AM transmission is beeing interrupted the audio
quality suffers audibly.

4.4.2 Differential quadrature phase-shift keying

Each subcarrier in turn is then modulated using DQPSK. Each digital signal
is represented by an anolog signal which is usually interpreted by comparing
it to an absolute value. In this particular case though the phase of a signal
is compared to the phase of the previous signal and thereof the original input
determined.

4.4.3 Ensembles and Bitrate

An ensemble is a multiplex of a set of radio programs. Additional data can be
added to the ensemble to provide the listener with more information. It can
contain programming guides, traffic information and so forth.
The total amount of data is limited by the bit rate an ensemble can carry.
It is currently at 1.2Mbit/s. This limit also affects the quality and quantity of
all radio programs on the ensemble.

4.5 Single Frequency Networks

Digital broadcasts allow the use of only one frequency for an ensemble over a
very large area. This is because the data from two different transmitters can be
added up by the reciever to increase signal strength. The transmitters need to
be very accurately syncronised for a SFN to work. Swisscom Broadcast uses the
GPS clock signal which offers precision on publicly available devices7 of 106 s.
A SFN in Mode I (see 4.1.2) uses a symbol guard interval of about 250ms.
In this time a symbol can travel about 70km which is the largest distance two
transmitter can have inbetween if they want to augment each others signal. If
the recievers gets a symbol that is older than the guard interval the symbol can
7 http://www.gpsclock.com/specs.html

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not be used anymore to decode the radio signal and must be discarded. This
can happen e.g. with reflexion from a mountain.
On AM/FM recievers a multipath signal does only create noise. A multipath
is created from reflexion on mountains, buildings etc.

5 DAB+
DAB with its origin in the early 1980s does not utilise the newest advancements
in compression and error correction. To remedy these weaknesses a new stan-
dard called DAB+ is going to be introduced in the near future. It utilises MP4
(see 4.2.2) audio compression instead of MP2 resulting in higher audio quality,
actually superior to analogue radio programs.
In Switzerland first DAB+ stations are planned to go on air in 2009, but only
covering parts of the german speaking population. DAB+ is probably going to
replace DAB because of its obvious advantages. Unfortunately this requieres
a new generation of receivers which support DAB+ . All the old receivers with
DAB technology will become obsolete, which is particularly bothersome for
consumers who have already purchased such a device.